I really don’t understand humans. I have several neighbors who drive to their mailbox which is at most 100’ from their front door. I don’t understand them, but I can predict their behavior. #life #human #character #writing

“Silence of the Prams” #writing #throwawayline

“He is not of this reality, and works to warp ours to his.” #writing

I’m just going to say this: books, videos, etc. about writing teach you how to write books that “sell” or “market well”. They don’t teach you how to write good stories, only those for which people will pay. “Sell them what they want.” Flame on! #writing

“He was an insect in a world of spiders.” #writing

“There are no difficult decisions. Only ones you can’t or don’t want to make.” #writing #life

“Insanity runs in his family. It’s always trying to get free.” #writing

“Without fear there is no progress.” #writing

“He was a stylized human the way an ancient Roman statue was a stylized pig.” #writing #throwawayline

“Peer into the distance and break the Fifth wall.” Don’t you mean the Fourth wall?” “That only works in books and movies. It’s always Dimension+2”. #writing

“Humans have a weird tradition of honoring the dead whom they raise on pedestals of confetti.” #writing

Observed: “Her body was covered in colored swirls and lines. It was like a bad Kaleido panel on low battery power—fuzzy, dark, and dim.” #writing #character #eink

“Change is the Thanos of life.” #writing #throwawayline #mcu

“He went through the metal detector, but it blared he was country.” #writing

Come to this year’s Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity Conference. Learn, meet, talk, get stuff signed. Have fun, or some semblance of the same. I’ll be making a nuisance of myself and giving stuff away . creaturescrimesandcreativity.com/2026-auth… #writing #author #reader #books #mdc3con

I’ve realized something deep and disturbing/reassuring. It explains a lot. I’ll work it into “The Cat and the Witch”, which I’ll write after my current WIP. No one will “get” it, but that’s how reality works. #writing #reality #philosophy

“Given everything you knew at the time, would you have acted differently? If yes, why didn’t you? If no, you prove my point. Free will is shackled by context and knowledge. Context is just history and what has come before. That is an overwhelming set of handcuffs.” #writing #time #philosophy

Gravity affects time. Sufficiently large gravitic sources can split time. Occurrences in both streams could lead to different “historical” timelines. The streams would probably combine unless other sources forced them apart. This could lead to null-time pockets. #physics #time #history #writing

“Everyone is a critic, even though they aren’t paid.” #writing #life #failure

“Don’t worry whether the world will end or not. Worry about who is about to bring about its end.” #writing

Overheard: Hockey isn’t about skating. It’s about hitting others. I grew up in Philly and that’s what I like to see. #character #writing

“The tidal wave of time overwhelms and drowns us all.” #writing

“Some of us wake up each day hopping we make it to tomorrow and the thin veneer of civilization holds.” #writing

“At least a lie of crime is a life.” #writing

I miss Shep. I’ll never be as good a story teller. #writing